Canada's grocery business is controlled by large players and needs government assistance to encourage new entrants to bring down prices, a report from Canada's Competition Bureau says.
Don’t see how this will work? Walmart entered Canada many years ago and does groceries yet pricing all settled out. If Walmart isn’t driving competition and pricing down what will?
I've seen a couple of (very limited) examples of restaurants using their contracts with suppliers to open small local grocery stores near their restaurants, that undercut the big grocery chains. If anything was possible, I'd prefer more local neighbourhood stores for packaged foods and community garden co-ops combined with farmer's markets for fresh foods.
There aren't that many Wallmarts relative to grocery stores and they also aren't usually in the same areas that people do grocery shopping, so I don't think they are a significant competition.